my thoughts on stamps, stamp collecting, philately in general and maybe a few other topics !

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

perforations... why they may be important

Hello, something different tonight. I have been putting together a Fiji collection - well to 1966 at least, as after that life as we know it just went downhill didn't it :-)

So what about these two stamps. Apart from the wonderful engraving and design they are really nothing other than half penny values. Right? Wrong. I bought a few lots on an auction site recently and as I usually do, I check what I think I have bought.

This issue is from 1938, and has a ½d value with Perf 13 ½ and, a Perf 14. So what you may ask............ well the Perf 13 ½ has a cat value ( mint I am talking here) of 20p (GB) while the Perf 14 has a cat value of £20

Now how pleased was I when I studied the stamps received to find a Perf 14.

Always check the perforations on these older GB Commonwealth issues, well for any issues for that matter as there can often be variations and to assume low value could be a costly assumption.

3 Comments:

Mike, you might also want to mention that many of those colonial stamps from that era have watermarks that can be block letters, script letters and possibly inverted or sideways..Those variations can also place a real premium of what might appear at first to be a common stamp.

The perf 14 you have is also unusual in a couple of other ways. First, it's very well centered for the issue as the perf 14's from this era are usually line perf and centered average to below average in most cases

Second, line perfs usually have a distinctive appearence in the corners- either the corner comes to a point or it has "mickey mouse ears." Your copy looks comb perfed, which means the 2 perf directions lined up almost perfectly which is very unusual.

Lastly, even if you copies were the same perf, they are clearly different shades (green and blue-green), making them quite collectible. My fast trick to see if 2 virtually identical stamps are the same perf is to place them on a black background and line up the perfs side by side to see if they are the same or different. If so, then out comes the gague!